South Asian monsoons, the Amazon rain forest and polar sea ice -- all significant environmental systems that control and regulate the climate of the entire planet -- could each serve as the site of an environmental tipping point as global temperatures rise, according to this article. Scientists are unable to predict the consequences of tipping-element changes to the Bodélé Depression in Chad or the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean, though changes to these systems have already been recorded. Wired.com/Wired Science blog

UN-CSD

The United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1992 to ensure effective follow-up of United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Earth Summit.The Commission is responsible for reviewing progress in the implementation of Agenda 21 and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development; as well as providing policy guidance to follow up the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI) at the local, national, regional and international levels. The JPOI reaffirmed that the CSD is the high-level forum for sustainable development within the United Nations system.The CSD meets annually in New York, in two-year cycles, with each cycle focusing on clusters of specific thematic and cross-sectoral issues, outlined in its new multi-year programme of work (2003-2017) . The cycles alternate a review year to a policy year.The CSD has opened its sessions to broad participation from both governmental and non-governmental actors, and it supports a number of innovative activities, such as the Partnerships Fair, the Learning Centre and a series of panels, roundtables and side events. The High-level segment features dialogue among Ministers, and Ministers also hold a special dialogue session with Major Groups. As a functional commission of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), CSD has 53 member States (about one third of the members are elected on a yearly basis). Each session of the CSD elects a Bureau, comprised of a Chair and four vice-Chairs.

Few people have quietly changed the world for the better more than this rural lad from the mid-western state of Iowa in the United States. The man in focus is Norman Borlaug, the Father of the ‘Green Revolution’, who died on Saturday, (September 12, 2009) at age 95. Norman Borlaug spent most of his 60 working years in the farmlands of Mexico, South Asia and later in Africa, fighting world hunger, and saving by some estimates up to a billion lives in the process. An achievement, fit for a Nobel Peace Prize.